We tend to disagree with Michael Marmot, even in his uses of the words “and” and “the”. He has a new report out today which needs to be addressed though:
Both “cold” and “poor” will contribute to worse health and greater health inequalities. It is a humanitarian crisis. One that will not be solved by tax cuts or removing levies that favour green energy, as seems to be the “solution” proposed by our likely next prime minister. We need to act on the immediate crisis, but we also need to ask how we got here, and what to do to solve the problem of fuel poverty, and its effects on health inequalities, in the longer term.
Well, yes, that seems to be something that could be addressed by having cheap energy.
Economists from Paul Krugman to Paul Johnson to Torsten Bell have solutions, going beyond conventional economics, of what we need to do to fix this winter’s looming crisis. Now, though, is also the time to deal with the longer-term problems that led us here in the first place.
That also seems a reasonable enough goal. Just what is to be done?
Households in Britain will see their spending power cut by an average £3,000 by the end of next year unless the new government acts to counter the biggest drop in living standards in at least a century, research has indicated.
Adding to pressure on Boris Johnson’s successor as prime minister to tackle a worsening cost of living crisis, the Resolution Foundation thinktank said soaring energy bills would cut household incomes by 10% and push an extra 3 million people into poverty.
Household spending power isn’t to be cut by such numbers at all. Rather, it’s to be diverted, to pay for fuel not other things. But the same solution suggests itself - if energy were cheap then we’d not have this problem.
So, where is energy cheap and they don’t have this problem? That would be the United States of course. And what’s the big difference in energy policy between the US and the pair of the UK and continental Europe? The existence or not of fracking, equally of course.
So, we solve the problem of the poor and huddled masses by doing as the US - or, as we’ve been saying these years, Should’a Gone Fracking.